Ukraine news – live: Russia confirms 63 soldiers killed on New Years eve in war’s deadliest attack
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A destroyed Russian BMP infantry fighting vehicle in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine on Monday
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The Russian defence ministry has made a rare admission of losing dozens of troops in one of the deadliest attacks launched by Ukraine on New Year’s eve.
At least 63 soldiers have been killed in a single attack on temporary barracks of Russian troops in a destroyed college in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk, officials in Moscow said.
The Volodymyr Zelensky administration claims to have killed as many as 400 Russians in a strike on a military base in an occupied part of Donetsk.
This comes as Mr Zelensky has warned of a prolonged attack by Russian troops using “Shaheds” and confirmed that the Ukrainian soldiers have shot down more than eighty Iranian drones in the last two days.
“This number may increase in the near future. Because these weeks the nights can be quite restless,” he warned.
Russia‘s bet “may be on exhaustion — on exhaustion of our people, our air defense, our energy sector”, he said.
Russian military bloggers were irate after the Kremlin admitted the troop deaths, accusing commanders of “criminal naivety”.
Scores of Russian troops killed in Ukraine missile strike
Dozens of Russian troops have been killed in an attack on a complex in the Donetsk region, officials have said.
This is one of the deadliest strikes against Vladimir Putin’s forces since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
In a rare acknowledgement of the scale of the attack on New Year’s eve, Russia‘s defence ministry claimed it lost 63 troops when Ukraine hit “a temporary deployment facility” in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Makiivka with four US-supplied Himars missiles. The message appeared to counter claims from Kyiv that hundreds of soldiers had been killed in the assault.
Good morning, welcome to our coverage of the Ukraine war on 3 January, Tuesday.
Source: independent.co.uk